We are in the process of designing crew quarters for our FPB 78. With no experience cruising and/or living with crew, we are working in a theoretical world rather than reality. If you are a professional crew, or an owner who has lived with crew, we’d love to hear from you. Read the rest »

We have been rethinking the ultimate dinghy concept and are looking at a big custom designed RIB for our new FPB 78. Not having experience with properly designed deep V RIBS, we have a few questions and are hopeful the SetSail community can provide real world answers.

Rudder control steering geometry is one of those things which looks simple, but is actually quite difficult to get right. Loads can be high, space tight, and when you are shooting for maximum rudder deflection, it can be a challenge.

Window coverings will play a more important role in the new FPB 78, given our goal of staying cool at anchor a majority of the time without a genset. This post is about the factors affecting the window covering decision, after which we’d love to have suggestions from SetSailors.

Having arrived back to the Seattle office a couple weeks ago, I now have a little time to sort through 100s of photos and share a few with you from my recent adventures aboard FPB 64-3 Iron Lady… Read the rest »

Last week I wrote about my recent trip to San Francisco, where my hosts, Bruce Farrand and Logan Cripps of Circa Marine (builder of the FPBs), were on-hand to represent and promote Kiwi boat building skills for North American clients. Read the rest »

Tomorrow, Saturday September 7, marks the start of an amazing spectacle that you don’t want to miss. Whether on network TV or YouTube, we will be treated to heated competition between “yachts” traveling at 25 to 50 knots, with no love lost between the teams.

This past weekend found me in San Francisco – courtesy of our builder Circa Marine of Whangarei, New Zealand – to witness the Kiwis’ very successful sail into the America’s Cup, with a dominant performance against the Italians in the Challengers Louis Vuitton Cup. Read the rest »

Mark Fritzer reports in from Palmyra, and brings us up to date on wonderful snorkeling and further experimentation with the high powered DC charging system. With comments on navigating with active SONAR in the tropics:

Crossing oceans often leads to compromise between weather, risk, comfort, and what might or mightn’t occur. An example of this was recently faced by the crew of FPB 64-3 Iron Lady. In this post we will look at issues involved, including hurricane avoidance tactics.

Having consulted the weather gods (Rick Shema), and with various mortals, the good ship Iron Lady is bound for Palmyra Island. Mark Fritzer continues his narrative, with interesting fuel burn data at various speeds and RPMs coupled with varying electrical loads.

On their fourth day at sea, the crew of FPB 64-3 Iron Lady use the aft deck sink to determine if they have crossed the Equator. Mark Fritzer continues his testing and analysis, and reports the results:

Although the furniture represents a small part of the total weight of the boat, we want it to be as light as practical, as you see here with the carcass for the FPB 97 great room settee. Read the rest »

The following report was sent in by Mark Fritzer of the FPB team, who is crewing aboard FPB 64-3 Iron Lady. They have just departed from Nuka Hiva in the Marquesas Islands, bound for Hawaii via the Line Islands. Read the rest »

We hate to waste displacement on sloppy interior construction, poorly thought out systems, or excess structure up high, where it does nothing to help us. But from the deck edge down we want all the impact resistance and factors of safety we can get. Read the rest »

Our thought has always been that the best indicator of success in the marine business is not units sold, or boat show pizzazz, but rather how your boats are being used. Are they sitting in marinas or out there racking up the miles, treating their owners to the world of new experiences that lay beyond the horizon?

Calculating drag, fuel burn, and range for yachts under power is a complex process, one which often turns out wrong in the real world. We are not sure what other folks do, but we use a combination of science, model testing, real world results, and various software suites, mixed with a healthy dose of gut instinct. Read the rest »

A standard part of every hull construction sequence is a series of X-Ray checks, the location of which is dictated by the owner’s surveyor. Circa have just completed this process on FPB 97-1 and we thought this QC check process might be of interest.

Those of you familiar with our work will know that we consider being able to maintain comparatively fast cruising speeds the mostimportant factor in safe, comfortable ocean crossing. Get this right and you enjoy making passages. Get it wrong and you will prefer sitting at the dock reading about the folks who are really out there cruising. Read the rest »

We are excited to announce that we have joined the Social Media fray. SetSail can now be found happily anchored on Facebook and Twitter. Come find us, like us and follow us as we explore these new waters: Facebook.com and Twitter.com. We look forward to seeing you out there!

If we had to pick one system above all else that must be 100% reliable we’d say steering. Which is why we fit two complete auto pilots, two independent hydraulic systems, and use intensely muscular structural elements. Most of this is easy, but establishing the engineering scenario for the rudder itself takes a bit of work. As we are just wrapping this up for the FPB 78, we thought you might find the logic of interest.

We feel that the most dangerous operation on any motor yacht is dinghy launch and retrieval. This applies to our FPB as well, even though our approach, with the dink on the main deck, is much easier (and we think safer) to handle than most. The heavier the dink, the bigger the risk, and this new dink is considerably weightier than our old, trending towards 1200 pounds/550kg. So we have been fiddling away at a better handling system since the beginning of the design cycle. What follows has been adapted from the approach being considered for FPB 97-1, and represents what we think is a step forward from where we have been in the past.

The FPB 78 aft deck design has evolved from these renderings, but we expect the launching procedure logic to remain the same.

I had the distinct pleasure of spending some time with Valerie and Stan Creighton as they became acquainted with their new baby back in March. Fast forward to June and they’ve just completed an adventurous passage from New Zealand to Fiji. Read the rest »

FPB 64-3 Iron Lady continues towards Papeete, and Skipper Pete gives us a heads up on what they log in the engine room. If you are interested in life aboard on a long passage, and how things should be running, read on.

Last year the new super yacht, Yogi, lost power while on passage, turned beam to the seas, capsized in moderate conditions, and eventually sank. There was all sorts of speculation at the time about causes. Now the official report is out. It makes interesting reading both for what it does and doesn’t say.

FPB 64-3, Iron Lady, has now passed the mystical “halfway point” on her voyage to Papeete. She is entrained between two high pressure systems, in a convergence zone, with heavy downpours, lightning, and crossing wave trains off the bow. For the day’s report on this, and the raw squid eating contest, read on. Read the rest »

It is the season of renewal, for those afloat and others afflicted with landed status. In the South Pacific there are two FPB 64s about to depart for points north and a third already heading west, with a fourth now in the Islands. The SetSail contingent? Stuck in Arizona viewing from afar, and… Read the rest »

Iron Lady is on her way across the South Pacific from Whangarei, New Zealand to Papeete, Tahiti, in French Polynesia. Pete Rossin and crew departed New Zealand three days ago and have been sending us periodic updates. We thought you might like to keep track of their progress on this occasionally difficult 2300NM passage.

The Northern Hemisphere summer is nearly here, and with it the hurricane season. With the FPB fleet getting ready to depart New Zealand for points North, and one of the boats thinking about winding up in Hawaii or California, we have been looking at the long range weather forecasts.

A couple of weeks ago, we invited suggestions for an ultimate rugged cruising dinghy. We appreciate all of you who took time to shoot us your ideas, of which there were many. What you see here and following is our adaptation of some of those, plus a few of our own, into a concept dinghy.

We’ve been gradually reorganizing our offices, and in the process trying to figure out what to do with out hull models. This plating model was in hand yesterday, and we got to thinking it might be of interest for the secrets it reveals.

We have recently been asked our ideas for the ideal mix of design factors for a larger FPB dinghy. This got us to thinking about our own experiences, and what we would want in this category of gear, if we were starting from scratch. The comments that follow are based on the assumption that the dinghies will often be used in cruising areas off the beaten path. In this post we will share a few thoughts, and ask for yours.

For those interested in photography and who use Lightroom, Photoshop, or Aperture, our favorite filter set is on sale. You can buy the complete NIK collection for just US $149.00. We paid four times this price. Read the rest »

You are looking at the original great room seating upholstery on Wind Horse at the end of 2011–that is six years after launching with more than 50,000 miles of intensive use. Aside from a little fabric fading, there is little to differentiate this from the original appearance. Read on to learn the secret to longevity. Read the rest »

Circa is at the stage where visual progress will accelerate, and it will become easier to get a sense of scale for the Wicked FPB 97. Bottom plating is in place and topside plating has begun. Read the rest »

We’ve been working with 3D supremo Ryan Wynott now for an intense year and a half, yet we’ve never met. So with a demanding schedule and tasks at hand requiring the closest collaboration, Ryan left his Canadian winter sanctuary for an arduous trip to the Sonoran desert, where we are presently moored. Read the rest »